Crypto Miners Fight Federal Agencies’ Demands To Reveal Energy Use

Lawyers representing a crypto trade group that includes one of the nation’s largest bitcoin mining companies have scored an interim victory in their scramble to stop the federal government’s attempt to collect data about their energy usage.

On Friday, a federal judge in Texas temporarily halted the government’s use of a mandatory survey, which would have forced companies to disclose how much electricity they use and from which suppliers, along with the computing capacity of the mining equipment.

The emergency hearing came just one day after the Texas Blockchain Council sued the Department of Energy and other federal agencies over the proposed survey. Now, the case is effectively halted for at least the next four weeks.

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Earlier this month, the EIA concluded that every year, the crypto mining industry uses approximately “0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption.”

“The increased demand associated with cryptocurrency mining can present challenges to the operation of electricity grids,” the agency also wrote.

Chris Higginbotham, a spokesperson for the Energy Information Administration, declined to comment on the case. The Department of Energy did not respond to Forbes’ request for comment.

“This is a case about sloppy government process, contrived and self-inflicted

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urgency, and invasive government data collection,” the Texas Blockchain Council wrote in their complaint.

According to one of the court filings, the administrator of the EIA decided to accelerate the survey due to bitcoin’s recent price increase and the higher demand for energy during winter months.

The cryptomining industry’s rising energy use has concerned many government officials at the local, state and federal levels in recent years.

In 2023, state lawmakers in Pennsylvania began new efforts to re-examine the industry’s effects on that state’s environment.

Nearly two years ago, the White House put out a fact sheet about the impact of cryptocurrency mining, which noted: “Depending on the energy intensity of the technology and the sources of electricity used, the rapid growth of crypto-assets could potentially hinder broader efforts to achieve U.S. climate commitments to reach net-zero carbon pollution.”